Loop Hero Review
Disclaimer: There will be minor mechanical spoilers in this review. As discovery is a major pillar of the game, I’d recommend skipping to the final paragraph of the review if you want to preserve the enigma. I won’t get too in-depth, but I wanted to warn readers just in case.
When I’m deciding which game to review every week, I usually push myself to pick a game that won me over on its own merits, even if I have to dig it out of the mountain of games released every week. I try to let hype persuade me only every once in a while, but this past week a game swept through my social sphere like a wildfire. Starting around last Thursday, I kept hearing about this new game from Devolver Digital called Loop Hero. It got to the point where a friend of mine with two very young children was jumping on board. I had missed this game completely but I figured this level of social support couldn’t be ignored and decided to take a look.
Loop Hero is set in a ruined fragment of the world. The Lich, a vile undead wizard, has destroyed the world and broken time, leaving the few survivors in a looping void. Players take the role of a Hero with an incredible power I’m sure to never have: the power to remember things. In his quest to restore the world he remembers, this power starts to cause the world to remember itself, carving out a small haven of stability in the void. But the Lich and his cohort stand against the Hero, as well as a variety of wild animals and hostile factions. To save the world, the Hero must walk the Loop again and again, building himself and the world into a power that can oppose his foes and entropy itself.
Playing Loop Hero is an odd experience, because in a way the player doesn’t do all that much. The game is split into to sections: the Loop and the Camp. The Loop is the core of the game, in which the Hero walks the Loop, a road in the void that starts and ends at a campfire but changes its path every time out. It starts barren but is expanded by the player using cards dealt out of a deck. These cards can add a wide variety of structures and geographical features, from forests to forges to blood-soaked battlefields. These additions will sometimes provide services for the Hero, but will mostly create opponents for him to fight. Unusually, the player has no direct involvement in these conflicts. Instead, AI controls the Hero as he travels and fights, so the player must work to set up a Loop that challenges the Hero to provide him with experience and loot, but make sure it’s not so challenging as to defeat the Hero. It’s like being a Dungeon Master for a game of Dungeons and Dragons or playing Mario Kart against a child. I honestly didn’t have much fun with this part of the game because of this mechanic. Setting up the loop and managing the Hero’s inventory is fun at first, but I quickly settle into a groove and it becomes about as engaging as a screen saver.
Alternately, the Camp is a fairly standard base builder where players spend resources to obtain permanent bonuses and new abilities for future outings to the Loop. As the Hero walks the Loop, he will gain resources both mundane and mystical that can be put to use in the Camp. Players can build watch towers for support from friendly archers or kitchens to prepare food. The aforementioned food, as well as tools, furniture, and jewelry, can be equipped to the Hero via the game’s supply system found in the Camp. Within these four categories, the Hero can obtain useful, though strange, minor boons, such as gaining a health boost proportional to the Hero’s defense by carrying a bowl of mixed nuts. This is also where the player unlocks new cards and decide which are used in the Loop’s deck. Lastly, it’s where players can meet and learn more about the few survivors the Hero has rescued, each of whom are interesting, though not given enough lines to have much depth.
The portion of the Loop that was engaging to me was discovering the myriad secrets hidden in Loop Hero. There are some cards that, at first blush, have a helpful service to provide the hero, such as providing treasure or helping with combat. But if the player gets careless or over-reliant with these cards, some hidden function will emerge and cause problems for the player. My favorite example of this is the Smith’s Forge card, which allows players to trade in items for a defensive bonus. Trade in too many items and the smith will get creative with his craft, constructing a violent golem from the Hero’s discarded equipment. Some cards reveal secrets when deployed adjacent to other cards. Almost all of these pairings have a flavorful reason for the change and matching effect. The first of these that I discovered was the interaction between the Vampire Mansion and Village cards. In the old world, vampires were the world’s eternal aristocrats, ruling lands and the people who lived on them. Since the Lich’s spell ruined the world, they are without subjects and without blood. Unable to eat and unable to die, vampires are now desperate raiders. Placing a Village adjacent to a Vampire Mansion will cause the Village to transform into a Ransacked Village, a ruined shell of civilization full of ruined people thanks to the vampire scourge.
The last kind of secrets, and certainly my favorite, are the secrets found in the game’s encyclopedia. This system seems to have been built specifically for fans like me. As expected, the encyclopedia holds information on the game’s various foes, resources and allies, but there is also the ability to unlock secret extra information. What’s better, these additional entries are unlocked using Memories, a resource used only for unlocking new information, and the entries are exactly that. When the player unlocks a new entry on the Living Armor enemy, it isn’t information from an academic study, it’s a memory from someone who calls himself “Mad Henrik, the Genius Blacksmith” transcribed into the book. I love this method of world building because it emphasizes the game’s core themes and makes it that much more engaging.
The final point about Loop Hero worth mentioning is the fact that some vital gameplay mechanics are left unexplained. Each of the three Hero classes have eight stats that can be affected by equipment and various Camp boons. Some of these stats are easy to understand, such as damage, regeneration, and evasion. Others are less obvious. The defense stat, in spite of its simple name, is a mystery to me. I have no idea how much a point of defense will do to keep the Hero alive. Is it a flat reduction, the defense number subtracted from the enemy’s damage, or is it a scaling value? I have no idea, so when I’m judging what loot should be equipped and what should be recycled, I can’t make a fully informed decision when it comes to defense. The same goes for the magic damage stat. What does magic damage do that regular damage doesn’t? Does it apply to the damage to all stat? There are more stats like this, especially for the third class, and Loop Hero has no interest in answering these questions which did hinder my enjoyment a bit.
I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced a game like Loop Hero before because it’s a game I don’t enjoy playing but do enjoy experiencing. Over the last week, I found myself wondering if it was designed with the modern tendency of gaming while watching Netflix while texting with friends in mind, because not having some other form of media in the background while playing Loop Hero sounds outright boring to me. But I think the discovery mechanics and lore are enough to make it worth the $15 asking price. If you’ve got a show you want to catch up on or a book you’ve been meaning to read or just need to watch a little guy go around a little track while you disassociate from the modern world, I thoroughly recommend Loop Hero.
Buy this game at full price
It’s worth every penny they’re asking
